We’re very excited to tell you about the 2016 Old Florida Outdoor Festival sponsored by the City of Apopka! Keep reading for your chance to win a family four pack of some really sweet tickets! Last year, we posted some information and even got a chance to check it out for ourselves. You can read all about our 2015 Old Florida Outdoor Festival experience on our site as well. In case you missed it, or just don’t have time to go back and read our previous post, the Old Florida Outdoor Festival was ranked as one of the very best family entertainment values of 2015!

So what’s the big deal? Think about your favorite country music concert, bounce houses, a BBQ competition, a chili cook-off, tons of community vendors, shooting competitions, livestock show, and fishing demos. Now put them all in the same place in one of the most beautiful venues we have ever seen, and you have the Old Florida Outdoor Festival! Ok, so that may be a bit of information overload so I’ll break it down:

For three days this February 12th through the 14th, the Apopka Amphitheater transforms into an amazing venue with some top-notch country music headliners. This year Parmalee with be performing Friday evening, with Chris Young following up Saturday night. Drake White will be performing Sunday night. What’s incredible is that you have a choice of purchasing actual assigned seats, or just chilling out in the massive general admission area. Be sure to bring a chair or blanket if you go the general admission route. Rest assured the acoustics are incredible, and no matter what your vantage point, you’ll have a great view!

So what can you expect when you actually get to the Old Florida Outdoor Festival? Well for starters, you’ll see tons of parking all around the amphitheater. (You’ll want to snap a photo of your car, and use the GPS data tagged in the photo to find your way back at the end of the night.) There is so much to do and see once you get inside, you can wander around for quite a while before you have had a chance to see everything. Continue reading →

Looking for a great family style outing Valentine’s Day weekend? What about surprising your sweetheart with FREE tickets? That’s right we have family 4 packs of passes to give away! Courtesy of the City of Apopka, you’ll enjoy all the Old Florida Outdoor Festival has to offer! We can’t wait to check out this event.

So what do you need to do to win? Entry is simple with these steps:

Leave a comment on the article below telling us where you’re from in Florida! Be sure you let us know your email address when you leave the comment so we can get the details on where to ship the prize. (Don’t worry no one else will see it. We may send you information regarding future giveaways via email, but you may opt out at any time.)

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As you may recall, I recently rediscovered my local library system. After receiving my new shiny new library card, I started to checkout many of the new, high-tech services that my local library has to offer. Amongst them, I discovered Hoopla, a FREE Netflix type media streaming service! Hoopla works on computers, phones and tablets. With a few quick work arounds, I was even able to stream directly to my television! So what exactly is Hoopla?

Hoopla, simply put is just like the Netflix app that you know and love, with a major exception: it’s FREE! That’s right, included in many library memberships nationwide is the service that allows you to stream not only TV shows and music, but also audio books and music albums! So lets start off with the basics here.. In order to use Hoopla, your library must pay for the service. That’s right, it’s technically supported by tax dollars. I read a few articles explaining the benefits of the hoopla service for libraries, and in particular for audio books, it’s much cheaper for libraries to pay each time you checkout a title than to flat out purchase it for loan. Pretty cool huh? Not all libraries participate, but checkout their coverage map to see. Remember they are nationwide, so you may be surprised at who else can use the service. It’s not limited to just Florida! Remember the picture of the map shown here is static, so check th slink to be sure you see the most up to date coverage areas as they bring on new library systems.

I’m the first to admit, that some of my posts are a bit out of order, and with the arrival of our latest family member, I have missed a couple of posts despite my best efforts at planning ahead. Please don’t let the timeliness of this post minimize the fun and excitement we had at the Scotts Zellwood Sweet Corn Jamboree! For those of you that haven’t been following Frugal Florida Fun, Long & Scott Farms has quickly become one of our favorite “Agritainment” venues to frequent.

Nom Nom Nom!

So lets back up a bit… We first checked out Long & Scott Farms last year during their annual Corn Maze and have kept in touch with them ever since. When we heard they were hosting the very first Scotts Zellwood Sweet Corn Jamboree, we were excited to tell our readers about it, and even had a great ticket giveaway courtesy for Long & Scott Farms. So what exactly is the Scotts Zellwood Sweet Corn Jamboree?

Well, it’s sort of hard to explain. The Scotts Zellwood Sweet Corn Jamboree is a cross between a community event with local vendors, a food truck event with lots of delicious choices, rich buttery Zellwood Sweet Corn and of course a rocking’ band! Parking was very reasonable at only $1, and it was much easier paying for parking knowing that the cash was actually a donation to a multitude of local charities including the Relay for Life, and other local High School groups. It’s about an hour and a half drive for us, so when we arrived, it was great to stretch our legs and unload our little guy with all his gear. Since we knew that this was going to be a large event, we also took the opportunity to test out some great child safety products like Safety Tats and the MyBuddyTag system. We had two extra children’s tickets courtesy of Long & Scott Farms, so we had a bit of fun distributing them amongst those walking up to the ticket booth. I was surprised just how many folks took advantage of the advance online ticket sales. We had to approach a handful of families before we found one that hadn’t pre purchased. While we wandered around outside a bit, we noted that the band sounded awesome and we hadn’t even walked in yet! Continue reading →

What do you get when you mix a concert with blue crabs, carnival rides, fireworks, community vendors and craft booths? The Palatka Blue Crab Festival of course! We packed up for a day of fun and adventure over the Memorial Day Weekend to checkout this historical community event located right on the St. Johns River. This is a three-day event that hosts all sorts of things including live music, fireworks and more.

We loaded up the family along with a small cooler of drinks. Before we left town, we stopped at Subway to we could “pre-eat” at the festival. It’s one of my general rules for food festivals to keep it frugal. It turns out those there is a Subway literally right in the middle of the festival, so next year we won’t need to pack ahead of time. We drove around downtown Palatka for quite a bit looking for parking, but eventually found a free spot. There where businesses and organizations that charged anywhere from $5 to $10 for private parking, but there are ample spots, just depending on how far you want to walk. We scarfed down our lunch in the car as we arrived around 1pm and slathered on the sun screen! In retrospect next year, we may either eat the local Subway or if we do a picnic lunch head over to Ravine Gardens State Park to enjoy some lunch at a picnic table before we go to the Palatka Blue Crab Festival. We would probably feel less rushed and would have had a great time at the gardens.

Being a new visitor to the Palatka Blue Crab Festival, we didn’t really know what to do or where to start, so we just sorta started walking torwards the riverfront. There was an entire streets cape filled with crag vendors and local artisans selling everything from marshmallow shooters to really cool outdoor furniture. There was a great mix of local and out-of-town talent peddling their wares. At about every street corner, there were food vendors selling all sorts of yummy smelling treats, drinks and more. The prices were reasonable for a street fair, and bottled drinks were being sold for around $2 all across the Palatka Blue Crab Festival. Not too bad, as many of these booths were fundraisers from everything from the Boys Scouts to local civic organizations.